October 4, 2017 • 28 mins
The loss of the U.S.S. Akron was the biggest single tragedy in aviation history at the time that it happened. But unless you’re an aviation or U.S. Navy history buff, you may not know much about this airborne aircraft carrier.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, listeners, we are soon to be appearing at New
York Comic Con as part of New York Comic Con
presents their evening programming. We are going to do an
episode about the creation of what is usually credited as
the first comic book, and we'll be talking about the
man who did it and how that came to be
and if you want to get in on that, we
would love to see you for our live show. It
is taking place on October six, from nine thirty to
(00:22):
eleven at the Hudson Mercantile. Again that runs during New
York Comic Con, and for more information on it, you
can visit our website Missed in History dot com. You
will click on the link this is live shows and
you can get all the info and a link to
order your tickets. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff
(00:44):
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy, did you
know that the loss of the U S. S Acron
was the biggest single tragedy in aviation history at the
time that had happened. I did not know that level
(01:05):
of detail. Yeah, because unless year in aviation or U. S.
Navy history buff you might not know much about it.
It's one of those things that kind of uh doesn't
get a whole lot of attention. I think we might
have mentioned it just as an aside in that episode
that we did about the Hindenburg, but even so we
did not get into any detail. Yeah, and even the
Hindenburg disaster, which happened four years after the Acron was lost,
(01:29):
resulted in far fewer lives lost, but probably because we
have terrifying dramatic footage of the Hendenburg burning, that very
tragic incident is far more commonly recalled in the public consciousness.
So today we are going to talk about the USS Akron,
one of two large rigid airships that were part of
the U. S. Navy's five year aircraft program, which was
(01:50):
authorized in and also just for clarity, doubts would come up,
but just in case, this is not to be confused
with a much smaller, privately owned air ship also called
the Akron. UH. That airship, which was owned by adventurer
and photographer Chester Melvin Vanaman, exploded off the coast of
New Jersey in nineteen twelve, killing its owner. But that
is a totally different thing. So for the one that
(02:14):
we are talking about, and the fall of nineteen nine,
construction began on the z R S four in acron, Ohio.
It was eventually renamed for the city where it was built.
The Good Years Zeppelin Corporation had signed a contract with
the Bureau of Aeronautics in to build this ship, which
was designed by Dr. Carl Arnstein to be an airborne
(02:37):
aircraft carrier. In a week into the build, there was
an official ceremony to markets beginning. So sometimes if you're
looking at the historical record, there are a couple different
dates that are listed as the beginning of construction, and
that's why there was some preliminary work done and then
a week after it they had this official ceremony uh
And during that ceremony, the chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics,
(02:58):
Rear Admiral William ama Fit, drove a golden rivet into
the main ring of the ship. By the spring of
one the hull was well underway and the name for
the ship, which was the Acron, like we said, was
announced by Ernest Lee Jankie, who was the Navy's Assistant Secretary.
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, in cooperation with the
City of Akron, Ohio, actually produced a short silent film
(03:21):
about the Acron's construction. It runs about twenty minutes and
it showcases all the features and innovations of the dirigible.
It features the quote huge building from which the giant
airship was hatched, as well as showing all of the
construction phases of this massive airship. In it, you can
also see workers raising the first ring into position, a
(03:42):
massive gas cell being placed in the frame for an
inflation and buoyancy test, the nose and tail of the
craft being moved into position, and the sheets that comprised
its outer covering being applied to the exterior of the
frame along with a number of other milestones and the
Acron's construction. Yeah, they show some cool footage of like
(04:02):
them doping that exterior, which is when they coat it
with its its protective coating, and it just looks like
dude spray painting. It's kind of fun to watch, um.
And the film also mentions the water ballast that was
used to keep the zeppelin steady, which was supplied by
exhaust vapors that were then condensed, so it was pretty
smartly designed as well. On August one, First Lady Mrs
(04:26):
lou Henry Hoover christened the airship as it was launched,
meaning that it was floating above the hangar floor, but
it was still contained there in the build bay. And
when the dirigible was completed, it was seven and eighty
feet that's two nine long, hundred and thirty two point
five feet or forty wide, and a hundred and fifty
(04:46):
two point two ft or forty six point five ms tall.
When fully inflated, its volume was six point five million
cubic feet and it had been built with a sturdy,
deep mainframe, and this design was actually a departure from
the rain design of prior dridgibles. It was inflated with helium,
and it featured eight may Back v L two engines,
(05:07):
which were reversible and thus offered a really high degree
of maneuverability for something this size. The Akron's design included
a third of the interior space dedicated to a hangar
which could accommodate five aircraft. We're going to talk about
how those planes were launched and retrieved in just a bit.
There were also two sections allocated to crew quarters, which
(05:28):
featured a galley, mess and washroom in addition to the
sleeping areas. The water that passed through the airship's engines
to cool them was then used to heat the crew quarters.
Yeah That hot water that they took away from the
engines then got a second life as a heating implement.
A month and a half after the christening, on September
twenty three, the Akron had her first flight, which was
(05:49):
conducted over Cleveland, Ohio, and before the dirigible was officially
commissioned as a Navy vessel, an additional eight test flights
were conducted, taking the ship farther and farther each time
and testing all of the various mechanisms aboard, just shy
of two years before the anniversary of the startup construction.
On October, the USS Akron was commissioned after having been
(06:12):
delivered to the Lakehurst, New Jersey, Naval Air Station, with
Lieutenant Commander Charles E. Rosendaal named as the commanding officer
of the new vessel. The Akron had its first official
Navy voyage on November two, on a course that took
it down the east coast of the United States to Washington,
d C. And from that moment on it saw plenty
(06:33):
of airtime, more than three hundred hours in flight over
the course of just a few weeks. Following that, forty
six of those three hours were logged on a single
mission that took the Acron on a round trip to Mobile, Alabama.
And the Akron really proved itself repeatedly. Um you will
see a lot of discussions of it as being plagued
(06:54):
by problems, and it had problems. We're going to talk
about those in a minute, but it also did some
pretty impressive things. On January nine of ninety two, the
Zeppelin took part in a search exercise that showed its
endurance and its capabilities as a search vessel. The goal
was for the Akron to locate a group of destroyers
that were on route to Guantanamo Bay and then follow, observe,
(07:15):
and report their activities. Due to the inclement weather i'm
January tenth, the crew of the Akron wasn't able to
sight the destroyers initially, although the destroyers did report spotting
the dirigible, but the airship kept looking for the destroyers
and eventually was able to spot and report on two
groups of ships on the eleventh, which made the scouting
(07:35):
mission a success. Yeah. This was to be clear when
we say it's an exercise, this is like a planned thing.
There were no enemies that they were citing. This was
all sort of training. And coming up, we're going to
talk about an accident that the Akron had in one
but first we're going to pause, have a little sponsor break.
(08:00):
So the following month after where we left off, on February,
the Acron was damaged in an accident. It was being
moved out of its hangar when a wind gust blew
the tail off its moorings and the back end of
the airship was then thrust downward and it impacted on
the ground. Repairs to the damage, which was mostly concentrated
around the lower fin, took two months. After this restoration
(08:23):
was complete, its first voyage took place on Ape and
this was a smooth nine hour flight. And soon after
there was this really unique technology tested. The Acron tested
what they called a spy basket on its next flight,
and this spy basket was just as it sounds. This
small addition that hung from the bottom of the airship
(08:44):
was space for a man to sit in uh and
observe the ground below. And the intent was that the
ship itself could stay within cloud cover for the most part,
while the basket could hang just below the clouds. This
test did not go well. It really did not go well,
and it's kind of it's not surprising to me that
it did not go well. The spy basket swung back
(09:07):
and forth really wildly, and it was considered to be
way too unstable for practical use. Fortunately, though, the test
was conducted with a sandbag in the spy seat and
not an actual person, so no one was harmed or
just traumatized by the test. No additional work was done
to try to make it viable either. They were like,
this is not gonna work, and they abandoned it immediately. Yeah,
(09:28):
we're about to talk about an interesting mechanism that kind
of ties into this, and I will explain. So we
mentioned earlier that the Akron was intended to be an
aircraft carrier, and the first time that function was tested
was on May third of nWo and in that flight,
which was conducted on the eastern seaboard along the New
Jersey coastline, pilots used the Acrons so called trapeze installation,
(09:50):
which was a method for docking aircraft with the dirigible
in flight. And this kind of followed up on that
spy basket idea because planes that were cooked on were
still hanging under the airship initially, and those guys could
also cite the ground, so that kind of replaced that
whole idea. There's actually some footage of some of these
types of connections and they give a sense of just
(10:11):
how precise and skilled the pilots of the planes had
to be. There was a rod assembly on the lower
side of the akron and that was the trapeeze that
had another rod across the bottom with a very slight
downward bend in the middle, and so for a plane
to dock it had to have uh what looked like
an inverted basket of rods, also a fix to the
(10:32):
top of it. So imagine like on top of the
cockpit there's this whole other little assembly and at the
apex of that inverted metal basket was a hook. So
the pilot would have to carefully align his plane so
that that hook would catch on to that trapeeze mechanism.
Once the plane had hooked onto the trapeeze and settled
(10:53):
to the bottom of the bend, mechanisms would drop into
place to keep the plane's hooks centered there, and then
the plane and the isilet could be drawn up into
the akron's internal hangar. Uh. This has been described in
some writings as like better than any amusement ride on Earth.
To me, it seems slightly terrifying, but you're minding to
be very uh well, and I'm wondering. I'm wondering what
(11:18):
all signaling and what not they had to make connections
just because um. Earlier this year, I toured the Midway
and listened to pilots talk about landing on an aircraft
carrier on the ocean. Yeah, which is also kind of
a white knuckle experience. But like there there are definitely
things that you have in your field division to align
(11:39):
with in instruments. So I'm very curious. Yeah, since that
was usually sort of centered underneath the the airship, like
they could align a little bit just by centering. But
I mean, it's it looks so sort of casual and relaxed.
When you watch the footage, they just seem like they
zip up, they're very it's smooth, and they just latch on.
(12:01):
But I can't imagine that there weren't some clunkers they
at some way, but these were also incredibly well trained pilots,
and the two pilots that performed that maneuver in the
May third test were Lieutenant Daniel W. Harrigan and Lieutenant
Howard L. Young. They first did the demonstration with an
end to Y Dash one biplane trainer and then with
(12:23):
a Curtis x F nine c DASH one sparrowhawk, and
these tests went really well, and they actually performed them
again the next day for members of the House Committee
for Naval Affairs who watched all of these proceedings and
how well this whole thing worked from a vantage point
as passengers on the Akron. On May eighth, the Akron
took flight again, this time traveling down the East Coast
(12:45):
to Georgia and then cutting west to California. The ultimate
destination for the Akron was Sunnyvale, California, but a stop
was planned at Camp Kearney in San Diego County, and
this stop was a tricky undertaking. The crew a Camp
Kearney had not brought in a dirigible like the Acron before,
and the specialized moorings that were used at the Navy
(13:06):
base in Lakers, New Jersey were not on hand, and
to further complicate the landing, the craft was lighter than
normal because it had burned so much fuel on this
cross country trip, and because the heat from the sun
had warmed it, the gases inside had expanded to be
less dense, so it just wasn't as easy to control
as it normally would be. Those two factors led to
(13:26):
a loss of control of the ship, and to prevent
it from hitting the ground nose first, the mooring cable
had to be cut. This did prevent a crash, but
it also resulted in a tragedy. Four of the men
who were holding lines to the ship didn't let go,
and one of them fell from a height of fifteen
feet which is four point six meters, and broken arm.
(13:47):
Three others held on. Initially, apprentice seamen cm Cowart was
able to cling to the line and not lose his grip,
and after a wild ride of about an hour, he
was pulled onto the akron. Yeah, there was allegedly an
attempt or a thought for a while that they were
going to land just him on the ground, but then
they realized they were not confident that they could do
(14:08):
it without like slamming him into the ground, so he
ended up being pulled aboard. Two other men were not
so lucky. Aviation Carpenter's mate, third Class Robert H. Edsel,
and apprentice Seaman Nigel M. Hinton both died after they
lost their grips on the lines that they held and
they fell to their deaths, and when interviewed a few
days later, Cowart, who was the man who had survived,
(14:29):
said quote, I just hung on. I saw the other
fellows fall and it didn't make me feel any too good,
but there was nothing I could do about it except
to hang on tighter. The Acron continued its missions, though
it stayed on the West coast for several weeks, It
traveled north to the Canadian border and participated in scouting
fleet exercises similar to the one that we mentioned earlier,
(14:49):
when it searched for destroyers that were headed to Guantanamo Bay.
The Acron once again performed admirably in these exercises. In June,
the airship left California to head back to lake Hurst,
and that journey took four days from June eleven to
June fifteenth, two before the Acron was able to get home,
and that was in part because it encountered several incidents
(15:12):
of just really bad weather along the way, and when
the Akron finally docked in New Jersey, the seventy nine
main crew was exhausted from the journey. When they're described
as coming down the gang point, they just all sound
like they were completely depleted. And the next several weeks
brought a welcome respite from flights as the airship underwent
maintenance and repairs. In July, the Akron was once again
(15:33):
air ready and assisted in a rescue mission when the
yacht Curlew went missing. This had been part of a
six d and twenty eight mile which is a thousand
and eleven kilometer race from Montauk to Bermuda, when the
boat and the six people on it were lost during
some bad weather. All the other twenty five yachts made
it through, but contact with the Curlew had been lost.
The Akron was ordered to fly in circles along the
(15:56):
course from the Curlew's last known location and to try
to report results back to naval operations. It was eventually
found off the coast of Nantucket. Yeah, but that yacht
search had caused a little bit of a pause in
the Acron's training missions. But we're gonna get right back
into that after we first take a quick break to
hear from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you
(16:17):
missed in history class going. So the focus of the
Akron's efforts at that point rescue missions for yachts aside
was continued experimentation and development of the trapeeze system. They
really wanted to primarily just drill the pilots so that
they would be extremely good at this uh and the
(16:39):
man in charge of these ongoing trapeze experiments, as appointed
by Rear Admiral Moffatt, was Commander alger Herman Dressel, and
under Dressel's leadership, the AKRON continued to advance its trapeeze work,
eventually achieving the ability to manage a full load of
Curtis F nine C two sparrowhawks on August two. There
was a new pro problem, though, due to a timing
(17:02):
accident and the relay of orders because the command was
given to early, the dirigibles fin hit a beam in
the hangar as it was being taken off its moorings.
This put a stop to the trapeze training that had
been underway while the Finn had to be repaired, but
the last quarter of nineteen thirty two still yielded eight
successful flights for the Acron, so that a little accident
(17:24):
had happened in August and they were able to repair
it pretty quickly. Training continued for the Trapeez system as
well as training for the Gun and Lookout cruise, and
they also worked with a formation scouting setup to test
that where two planes flanked the Akron as they performed
search exercises. In early nine thirty three, the Acron had
a leadership change. Commander Dressel was moved to the akron
(17:48):
sister ship, the USS, making His replacement was Commander Frank McCord.
This personnel change took place on January third, ninety three,
and almost immediately McCord was underway on a flight with
his new command and the Akron on this This first
flight under McCord traveled down the East coast to Florida,
stopping in Miami Dade County at Opallaca, Florida, to refuel.
(18:11):
This is not to be confused with the very very
familiar sounding Opalaika, which is a city in Alabama. After
the refuel at the Naval Reserve Aviation Base in Opelaca,
the Akron proceeded to Guantanama Bay, Cuba. This mission was
to inspect bases, and the crew performing those inspections was
actually taxied from the Akron in flight to the basis
(18:33):
via an into Y one biplane. Once the inspection rounds
were completed, Commander McCord and his crew took the Acron
back to New Jersey. Inclement weather kept the Akron grounded
for several weeks at Lakehurst, but it wasn't long before
the trapeze training continued. And as we mentioned when describing
the trapeze mechanism, it really did require an incredibly deft
(18:55):
hand on the part of a pilot to hook onto
the airship. So it really, uh if it's see was
like we're just saying over and over that they were
doing a lot of training in this particular area. It's
because they were. It was needed to get those pilots
just so proficient that they could do it almost without
having to think. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was worn in
as the thirty second President of the United States on
(19:16):
March fourth, three, the Akron was overhead, but just a
week later, on March eleventh, Acron once again left its
northeast home of Lakehurst. This time the mission took the
airship to Panama, stopping once again at opal Laca, Florida
en route, and after that the dirigible and its crew
were on course for the naval station at Balboa in
(19:37):
the Panama Canal zone, which sits just at the south
end of the canal if you're looking at it, and
that's the entrance from the Pacific Ocean. And as with
the Acron's mission to Cuba, the objective in this case
was an inspection, this time of a possible site for
an air base. Once the inspection was concluded, the Akron
headed back to Opelaka. This time additional drills were conducted
(19:58):
at the Florida base. The gun cruise got target practice,
using the N two y ones as targets. As March
came to a close, the Acron headed back to New
Jersey from Florida, but the airship wasn't moored for long.
On April third, another mission began, and this time it
was intended to help calibrate radio direction finding stations along
(20:20):
the New England coast which were used for radio triangulation.
But the voyage wasn't smooth. When the Akron passed over
Barneket Light in Ocean County, New Jersey that ten pm
on April three. The airship was already dealing with severe weather.
Two and a half hours later, at twelve thirty am
on April fourth, the Acron was swipped by a particularly
powerful gust and dropped tail first into the sea. There
(20:44):
had been a witness to the struggle the acron struggle
with the wind, and that was a German ship called
Phoebus that had seen lights in the air dropping down
toward the Atlantic, and the crew aboard the Phoebus actually
thought they were witnessing a plane crash, so Phoebus altered
course to investigate. In about a half hour after the incident,
they pulled the first person from the water, and that
(21:07):
was Lieutenant Commander Henry V. Wiley, who was unconscious at
the time. At this point, the crew of the Phoebus
still thought they were finding the results of a plane crash.
They had no idea that the Acron had been in
the area. Phoebus also sent out its boat to widen
the search for victims. The boat crew fished Boson's mate,
second class Richard E. Deal Aviation Metalsmith's second class Moody
(21:30):
e Irvin and Chief Radioman Robert W. Copeland out of
the turbulent water. Copeland died after being transferred to the Phoebus,
despite efforts to revive him. As the rescue effort continued,
Lieutenant Commander Wiley regained consciousness and communicated to the crew
of the German vessel, but it had been the Acron
and not a plane that they saw to send into
(21:51):
the sea. For more than five hours, Phoebus continued to
search for survivors, but their efforts were for not two
more men. Actually, he died in the search effort when
another blimp, the non rigid J three, which also served
out of the base at Lakehurst, went on a mission
to search for survivors. Five men survived the unsuccessful forced
(22:12):
landing of the J three, but there were two killed.
Five and a half hours after the Acron went down,
the Coastguard destroyer Tucker arrived on the scene. The Phoebus
transferred the body of Chief radium In Copeland and the
surviving crew of the Acron over to the Tucker and
the search for any additional survivors. The destroyer Tucker was
joined by the Portland, a heavy cruiser destroyers Cole McDougall
(22:35):
and Hunt, the cutter Mojave, and two Coastguard planes, but
no additional members of the crew of the Acron were found.
This loss was particularly noteworthy because of the leadership staff
that was on board when this accident happened. So, in
addition to the regular staff, UH and Commander McCord, Rear
(22:55):
Admiral Moffatt, his aid, Commander Henry B. Cecil, the commander
of the name Will Air Station at Lakehurst, and several
additional guests were also on the Acron when it went down.
In total, seventies three men lost their lives when the
Acron was destroyed. So for comparison, we mentioned the Hendenburg
at the beginning of the show UH and the death
hole in the Hindenburg disaster was thirty six, one of
(23:17):
whom was a man who had been on the ground.
Sixty two of the people aboard the Hennenburg survived, which
is a far greater proportion than the three who survived
the Akron. Not long after the disaster, Wiley, Richard Deal,
and Moody Irvin appeared together before the public, and Wiley
described to the events of April fourth this way, we
were rescued by the German tanker Phoebus and are the
(23:40):
sole survivors. Just before the accident to the Akron, I
was in the control tower on the left side of
the control tower. Our first indication of being near the
center of the storm was when the ship shuttered violently,
and per Wiley's account, the crew did not realize how
closely they had gotten to the ocean until they had
sudden visibility that they were only about three feet from
(24:02):
the water. And he continued quote, the order was given
to stand by for a crash. The ship hit the
water within thirty seconds of that order, and most of us,
I believe, were catapulted into the water. We were in
the water about forty five minutes, and we are now
ready for duty in airships or wherever we may be assigned. Incidentally,
(24:22):
Herbert Wiley had been passed over for command of the
Acron when both Dressel and McCord were appointed. Wiley had
notified McCord if the weather conditions that could include potentially
hazardous storms before the Acron had left for the mission,
but McCord had determined that they should proceed as planned.
A storm that developed in their path was one of
the most powerful in a decade. Yeah, even though there
(24:44):
had been indications that there was going to be inclement weather, Uh,
there was no sense of how bad and how violent
this storm was going to be. Wiley was commanding officer
aboard the Akron sister ship, the USS Making, when it
went down in storm off the California coast just a
year later. Wiley also survived that incident. While portions of
(25:06):
the Akron were salvaged from the sea weeks after it sank,
in two thousand two, additional debris was explored by the Navy.
Portions of the ship's rigid ribs were observed still sticking
out of the sediment on the ocean floor. The Akron's
pennant is now part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential
Library and Museum's collection. In fourteen, a grant from the
(25:28):
National Film Preservation Foundation to the University of Akron's archival
services enabled the library division to preserve several films of
the Akron, and several of them were referenced in this episode.
We will link to them in the show notes. Yeah,
it's just four, but they're um they're really interesting, particularly
that one that shows them training to hook onto the
(25:49):
trapeze is really spectacular. It seems very slow and relaxed,
but when you realize what's happening, it seems almost discordant
in how calm it seems, because I would be completely
in a state of nerve wrack. Uh. So that is
the acron. We may eventually also do an episode on
the sister ship the USS make in, but for the moment,
that's the akron. Do you also have some listener mail
(26:10):
for us? I do, Um. We have gotten so many
postcards lately, and I just wanted to acknowledge a few
of them. Um. The first is from our listener page.
She says, Hey, I thought you might enjoy the sweet postcard.
I also wanted to thank you for the great show
and express how much I enjoy listening. As a student
at b Y you studying American studies. I love learning
new things about history. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Paige.
(26:33):
It's a lovely postcard, and I presume it's probably aimed
a little bit more at me because it is a
Star Wars postcard. Um, and I love it. It's darling.
Thank you so much. We also had a postcard from
our listener Joe Anne uh, and it is uh an
Edward Gory postcard that said her laugh made beatles swoon,
her frown made geese and cows turn upside down, illustration
(26:56):
of a goose and a cow flipped over uh, and
suggested maybe we should do an episode in the life
of Edward Gory, which we've certainly talked about. I have,
but that unless something goes wrong, it is in the works.
It is in the works, but a couple of things
need to happen first. Yeah. Uh, so that is lovely
(27:18):
and I love Gory, so I'm always in and I
can't wait for that one. And then our last one
is this hilarious postcard from I think it is Helena.
This is one of those cases where the postage markings
have kind of obscured things. But it is a postcard
from Froggy Land. She says she is holidaying in Croatia,
(27:40):
and amongst visiting many other interesting sites, we came across
this strange tourist attraction, which is Froggy Land, a room
with lots of boxes of stuffed frogs. Uh, I'm reading
this correctly. It says five hundred and seven of them
arranged in lifelike human poses. So now I have another
place that I want to go. It reminds me a
little bit of the the episode that we did about
(28:03):
the taxidermist named Potter, who did particularly a lot of
little cute mammals in adorable human poses. Froggy Land looks
very much the same, but all with frogs. So thank
you so much. This is just delightful. Uh. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at house to works dot com. You
can also find us across the spectrum of social media
as missed in History. You can visit missed in history
(28:25):
dot com to see all of our episodes of the
show ever, including many, many many before Tracy and I
were even involved. Uh, and on the episodes that Tracy
and I have worked on, they're also show notes, so
you can get all of that stuff if you just
come and visit us at missed in History dot com.
(28:46):
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Hey, listeners, we are soon to be appearing at New
York Comic Con as part of New York Comic Con
presents their evening programming. We are going to do an
episode about the creation of what is usually credited as
the first comic book, and we'll be talking about the
man who did it and how that came to be
and if you want to get in on that, we
would love to see you for our live show. It
is taking place on October six, from nine thirty to
(00:22):
eleven at the Hudson Mercantile. Again that runs during New
York Comic Con, and for more information on it, you
can visit our website Missed in History dot com. You
will click on the link this is live shows and
you can get all the info and a link to
order your tickets. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff
(00:44):
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy, did you
know that the loss of the U S. S Acron
was the biggest single tragedy in aviation history at the
time that had happened. I did not know that level
(01:05):
of detail. Yeah, because unless year in aviation or U. S.
Navy history buff you might not know much about it.
It's one of those things that kind of uh doesn't
get a whole lot of attention. I think we might
have mentioned it just as an aside in that episode
that we did about the Hindenburg, but even so we
did not get into any detail. Yeah, and even the
Hindenburg disaster, which happened four years after the Acron was lost,
(01:29):
resulted in far fewer lives lost, but probably because we
have terrifying dramatic footage of the Hendenburg burning, that very
tragic incident is far more commonly recalled in the public consciousness.
So today we are going to talk about the USS Akron,
one of two large rigid airships that were part of
the U. S. Navy's five year aircraft program, which was
(01:50):
authorized in and also just for clarity, doubts would come up,
but just in case, this is not to be confused
with a much smaller, privately owned air ship also called
the Akron. UH. That airship, which was owned by adventurer
and photographer Chester Melvin Vanaman, exploded off the coast of
New Jersey in nineteen twelve, killing its owner. But that
is a totally different thing. So for the one that
(02:14):
we are talking about, and the fall of nineteen nine,
construction began on the z R S four in acron, Ohio.
It was eventually renamed for the city where it was built.
The Good Years Zeppelin Corporation had signed a contract with
the Bureau of Aeronautics in to build this ship, which
was designed by Dr. Carl Arnstein to be an airborne
(02:37):
aircraft carrier. In a week into the build, there was
an official ceremony to markets beginning. So sometimes if you're
looking at the historical record, there are a couple different
dates that are listed as the beginning of construction, and
that's why there was some preliminary work done and then
a week after it they had this official ceremony uh
And during that ceremony, the chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics,
(02:58):
Rear Admiral William ama Fit, drove a golden rivet into
the main ring of the ship. By the spring of
one the hull was well underway and the name for
the ship, which was the Acron, like we said, was
announced by Ernest Lee Jankie, who was the Navy's Assistant Secretary.
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, in cooperation with the
City of Akron, Ohio, actually produced a short silent film
(03:21):
about the Acron's construction. It runs about twenty minutes and
it showcases all the features and innovations of the dirigible.
It features the quote huge building from which the giant
airship was hatched, as well as showing all of the
construction phases of this massive airship. In it, you can
also see workers raising the first ring into position, a
(03:42):
massive gas cell being placed in the frame for an
inflation and buoyancy test, the nose and tail of the
craft being moved into position, and the sheets that comprised
its outer covering being applied to the exterior of the
frame along with a number of other milestones and the
Acron's construction. Yeah, they show some cool footage of like
(04:02):
them doping that exterior, which is when they coat it
with its its protective coating, and it just looks like
dude spray painting. It's kind of fun to watch, um.
And the film also mentions the water ballast that was
used to keep the zeppelin steady, which was supplied by
exhaust vapors that were then condensed, so it was pretty
smartly designed as well. On August one, First Lady Mrs
(04:26):
lou Henry Hoover christened the airship as it was launched,
meaning that it was floating above the hangar floor, but
it was still contained there in the build bay. And
when the dirigible was completed, it was seven and eighty
feet that's two nine long, hundred and thirty two point
five feet or forty wide, and a hundred and fifty
(04:46):
two point two ft or forty six point five ms tall.
When fully inflated, its volume was six point five million
cubic feet and it had been built with a sturdy,
deep mainframe, and this design was actually a departure from
the rain design of prior dridgibles. It was inflated with helium,
and it featured eight may Back v L two engines,
(05:07):
which were reversible and thus offered a really high degree
of maneuverability for something this size. The Akron's design included
a third of the interior space dedicated to a hangar
which could accommodate five aircraft. We're going to talk about
how those planes were launched and retrieved in just a bit.
There were also two sections allocated to crew quarters, which
(05:28):
featured a galley, mess and washroom in addition to the
sleeping areas. The water that passed through the airship's engines
to cool them was then used to heat the crew quarters.
Yeah That hot water that they took away from the
engines then got a second life as a heating implement.
A month and a half after the christening, on September
twenty three, the Akron had her first flight, which was
(05:49):
conducted over Cleveland, Ohio, and before the dirigible was officially
commissioned as a Navy vessel, an additional eight test flights
were conducted, taking the ship farther and farther each time
and testing all of the various mechanisms aboard, just shy
of two years before the anniversary of the startup construction.
On October, the USS Akron was commissioned after having been
(06:12):
delivered to the Lakehurst, New Jersey, Naval Air Station, with
Lieutenant Commander Charles E. Rosendaal named as the commanding officer
of the new vessel. The Akron had its first official
Navy voyage on November two, on a course that took
it down the east coast of the United States to Washington,
d C. And from that moment on it saw plenty
(06:33):
of airtime, more than three hundred hours in flight over
the course of just a few weeks. Following that, forty
six of those three hours were logged on a single
mission that took the Acron on a round trip to Mobile, Alabama.
And the Akron really proved itself repeatedly. Um you will
see a lot of discussions of it as being plagued
(06:54):
by problems, and it had problems. We're going to talk
about those in a minute, but it also did some
pretty impressive things. On January nine of ninety two, the
Zeppelin took part in a search exercise that showed its
endurance and its capabilities as a search vessel. The goal
was for the Akron to locate a group of destroyers
that were on route to Guantanamo Bay and then follow, observe,
(07:15):
and report their activities. Due to the inclement weather i'm
January tenth, the crew of the Akron wasn't able to
sight the destroyers initially, although the destroyers did report spotting
the dirigible, but the airship kept looking for the destroyers
and eventually was able to spot and report on two
groups of ships on the eleventh, which made the scouting
(07:35):
mission a success. Yeah. This was to be clear when
we say it's an exercise, this is like a planned thing.
There were no enemies that they were citing. This was
all sort of training. And coming up, we're going to
talk about an accident that the Akron had in one
but first we're going to pause, have a little sponsor break.
(08:00):
So the following month after where we left off, on February,
the Acron was damaged in an accident. It was being
moved out of its hangar when a wind gust blew
the tail off its moorings and the back end of
the airship was then thrust downward and it impacted on
the ground. Repairs to the damage, which was mostly concentrated
around the lower fin, took two months. After this restoration
(08:23):
was complete, its first voyage took place on Ape and
this was a smooth nine hour flight. And soon after
there was this really unique technology tested. The Acron tested
what they called a spy basket on its next flight,
and this spy basket was just as it sounds. This
small addition that hung from the bottom of the airship
(08:44):
was space for a man to sit in uh and
observe the ground below. And the intent was that the
ship itself could stay within cloud cover for the most part,
while the basket could hang just below the clouds. This
test did not go well. It really did not go well,
and it's kind of it's not surprising to me that
it did not go well. The spy basket swung back
(09:07):
and forth really wildly, and it was considered to be
way too unstable for practical use. Fortunately, though, the test
was conducted with a sandbag in the spy seat and
not an actual person, so no one was harmed or
just traumatized by the test. No additional work was done
to try to make it viable either. They were like,
this is not gonna work, and they abandoned it immediately. Yeah,
(09:28):
we're about to talk about an interesting mechanism that kind
of ties into this, and I will explain. So we
mentioned earlier that the Akron was intended to be an
aircraft carrier, and the first time that function was tested
was on May third of nWo and in that flight,
which was conducted on the eastern seaboard along the New
Jersey coastline, pilots used the Acrons so called trapeze installation,
(09:50):
which was a method for docking aircraft with the dirigible
in flight. And this kind of followed up on that
spy basket idea because planes that were cooked on were
still hanging under the airship initially, and those guys could
also cite the ground, so that kind of replaced that
whole idea. There's actually some footage of some of these
types of connections and they give a sense of just
(10:11):
how precise and skilled the pilots of the planes had
to be. There was a rod assembly on the lower
side of the akron and that was the trapeeze that
had another rod across the bottom with a very slight
downward bend in the middle, and so for a plane
to dock it had to have uh what looked like
an inverted basket of rods, also a fix to the
(10:32):
top of it. So imagine like on top of the
cockpit there's this whole other little assembly and at the
apex of that inverted metal basket was a hook. So
the pilot would have to carefully align his plane so
that that hook would catch on to that trapeeze mechanism.
Once the plane had hooked onto the trapeeze and settled
(10:53):
to the bottom of the bend, mechanisms would drop into
place to keep the plane's hooks centered there, and then
the plane and the isilet could be drawn up into
the akron's internal hangar. Uh. This has been described in
some writings as like better than any amusement ride on Earth.
To me, it seems slightly terrifying, but you're minding to
be very uh well, and I'm wondering. I'm wondering what
(11:18):
all signaling and what not they had to make connections
just because um. Earlier this year, I toured the Midway
and listened to pilots talk about landing on an aircraft
carrier on the ocean. Yeah, which is also kind of
a white knuckle experience. But like there there are definitely
things that you have in your field division to align
(11:39):
with in instruments. So I'm very curious. Yeah, since that
was usually sort of centered underneath the the airship, like
they could align a little bit just by centering. But
I mean, it's it looks so sort of casual and relaxed.
When you watch the footage, they just seem like they
zip up, they're very it's smooth, and they just latch on.
(12:01):
But I can't imagine that there weren't some clunkers they
at some way, but these were also incredibly well trained pilots,
and the two pilots that performed that maneuver in the
May third test were Lieutenant Daniel W. Harrigan and Lieutenant
Howard L. Young. They first did the demonstration with an
end to Y Dash one biplane trainer and then with
(12:23):
a Curtis x F nine c DASH one sparrowhawk, and
these tests went really well, and they actually performed them
again the next day for members of the House Committee
for Naval Affairs who watched all of these proceedings and
how well this whole thing worked from a vantage point
as passengers on the Akron. On May eighth, the Akron
took flight again, this time traveling down the East Coast
(12:45):
to Georgia and then cutting west to California. The ultimate
destination for the Akron was Sunnyvale, California, but a stop
was planned at Camp Kearney in San Diego County, and
this stop was a tricky undertaking. The crew a Camp
Kearney had not brought in a dirigible like the Acron before,
and the specialized moorings that were used at the Navy
(13:06):
base in Lakers, New Jersey were not on hand, and
to further complicate the landing, the craft was lighter than
normal because it had burned so much fuel on this
cross country trip, and because the heat from the sun
had warmed it, the gases inside had expanded to be
less dense, so it just wasn't as easy to control
as it normally would be. Those two factors led to
(13:26):
a loss of control of the ship, and to prevent
it from hitting the ground nose first, the mooring cable
had to be cut. This did prevent a crash, but
it also resulted in a tragedy. Four of the men
who were holding lines to the ship didn't let go,
and one of them fell from a height of fifteen
feet which is four point six meters, and broken arm.
(13:47):
Three others held on. Initially, apprentice seamen cm Cowart was
able to cling to the line and not lose his grip,
and after a wild ride of about an hour, he
was pulled onto the akron. Yeah, there was allegedly an
attempt or a thought for a while that they were
going to land just him on the ground, but then
they realized they were not confident that they could do
(14:08):
it without like slamming him into the ground, so he
ended up being pulled aboard. Two other men were not
so lucky. Aviation Carpenter's mate, third Class Robert H. Edsel,
and apprentice Seaman Nigel M. Hinton both died after they
lost their grips on the lines that they held and
they fell to their deaths, and when interviewed a few
days later, Cowart, who was the man who had survived,
(14:29):
said quote, I just hung on. I saw the other
fellows fall and it didn't make me feel any too good,
but there was nothing I could do about it except
to hang on tighter. The Acron continued its missions, though
it stayed on the West coast for several weeks, It
traveled north to the Canadian border and participated in scouting
fleet exercises similar to the one that we mentioned earlier,
(14:49):
when it searched for destroyers that were headed to Guantanamo Bay.
The Acron once again performed admirably in these exercises. In June,
the airship left California to head back to lake Hurst,
and that journey took four days from June eleven to
June fifteenth, two before the Acron was able to get home,
and that was in part because it encountered several incidents
(15:12):
of just really bad weather along the way, and when
the Akron finally docked in New Jersey, the seventy nine
main crew was exhausted from the journey. When they're described
as coming down the gang point, they just all sound
like they were completely depleted. And the next several weeks
brought a welcome respite from flights as the airship underwent
maintenance and repairs. In July, the Akron was once again
(15:33):
air ready and assisted in a rescue mission when the
yacht Curlew went missing. This had been part of a
six d and twenty eight mile which is a thousand
and eleven kilometer race from Montauk to Bermuda, when the
boat and the six people on it were lost during
some bad weather. All the other twenty five yachts made
it through, but contact with the Curlew had been lost.
The Akron was ordered to fly in circles along the
(15:56):
course from the Curlew's last known location and to try
to report results back to naval operations. It was eventually
found off the coast of Nantucket. Yeah, but that yacht
search had caused a little bit of a pause in
the Acron's training missions. But we're gonna get right back
into that after we first take a quick break to
hear from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you
(16:17):
missed in history class going. So the focus of the
Akron's efforts at that point rescue missions for yachts aside
was continued experimentation and development of the trapeeze system. They
really wanted to primarily just drill the pilots so that
they would be extremely good at this uh and the
(16:39):
man in charge of these ongoing trapeze experiments, as appointed
by Rear Admiral Moffatt, was Commander alger Herman Dressel, and
under Dressel's leadership, the AKRON continued to advance its trapeeze work,
eventually achieving the ability to manage a full load of
Curtis F nine C two sparrowhawks on August two. There
was a new pro problem, though, due to a timing
(17:02):
accident and the relay of orders because the command was
given to early, the dirigibles fin hit a beam in
the hangar as it was being taken off its moorings.
This put a stop to the trapeze training that had
been underway while the Finn had to be repaired, but
the last quarter of nineteen thirty two still yielded eight
successful flights for the Acron, so that a little accident
(17:24):
had happened in August and they were able to repair
it pretty quickly. Training continued for the Trapeez system as
well as training for the Gun and Lookout cruise, and
they also worked with a formation scouting setup to test
that where two planes flanked the Akron as they performed
search exercises. In early nine thirty three, the Acron had
a leadership change. Commander Dressel was moved to the akron
(17:48):
sister ship, the USS, making His replacement was Commander Frank McCord.
This personnel change took place on January third, ninety three,
and almost immediately McCord was underway on a flight with
his new command and the Akron on this This first
flight under McCord traveled down the East coast to Florida,
stopping in Miami Dade County at Opallaca, Florida, to refuel.
(18:11):
This is not to be confused with the very very
familiar sounding Opalaika, which is a city in Alabama. After
the refuel at the Naval Reserve Aviation Base in Opelaca,
the Akron proceeded to Guantanama Bay, Cuba. This mission was
to inspect bases, and the crew performing those inspections was
actually taxied from the Akron in flight to the basis
(18:33):
via an into Y one biplane. Once the inspection rounds
were completed, Commander McCord and his crew took the Acron
back to New Jersey. Inclement weather kept the Akron grounded
for several weeks at Lakehurst, but it wasn't long before
the trapeze training continued. And as we mentioned when describing
the trapeze mechanism, it really did require an incredibly deft
(18:55):
hand on the part of a pilot to hook onto
the airship. So it really, uh if it's see was
like we're just saying over and over that they were
doing a lot of training in this particular area. It's
because they were. It was needed to get those pilots
just so proficient that they could do it almost without
having to think. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was worn in
as the thirty second President of the United States on
(19:16):
March fourth, three, the Akron was overhead, but just a
week later, on March eleventh, Acron once again left its
northeast home of Lakehurst. This time the mission took the
airship to Panama, stopping once again at opal Laca, Florida
en route, and after that the dirigible and its crew
were on course for the naval station at Balboa in
(19:37):
the Panama Canal zone, which sits just at the south
end of the canal if you're looking at it, and
that's the entrance from the Pacific Ocean. And as with
the Acron's mission to Cuba, the objective in this case
was an inspection, this time of a possible site for
an air base. Once the inspection was concluded, the Akron
headed back to Opelaka. This time additional drills were conducted
(19:58):
at the Florida base. The gun cruise got target practice,
using the N two y ones as targets. As March
came to a close, the Acron headed back to New
Jersey from Florida, but the airship wasn't moored for long.
On April third, another mission began, and this time it
was intended to help calibrate radio direction finding stations along
(20:20):
the New England coast which were used for radio triangulation.
But the voyage wasn't smooth. When the Akron passed over
Barneket Light in Ocean County, New Jersey that ten pm
on April three. The airship was already dealing with severe weather.
Two and a half hours later, at twelve thirty am
on April fourth, the Acron was swipped by a particularly
powerful gust and dropped tail first into the sea. There
(20:44):
had been a witness to the struggle the acron struggle
with the wind, and that was a German ship called
Phoebus that had seen lights in the air dropping down
toward the Atlantic, and the crew aboard the Phoebus actually
thought they were witnessing a plane crash, so Phoebus altered
course to investigate. In about a half hour after the incident,
they pulled the first person from the water, and that
(21:07):
was Lieutenant Commander Henry V. Wiley, who was unconscious at
the time. At this point, the crew of the Phoebus
still thought they were finding the results of a plane crash.
They had no idea that the Acron had been in
the area. Phoebus also sent out its boat to widen
the search for victims. The boat crew fished Boson's mate,
second class Richard E. Deal Aviation Metalsmith's second class Moody
(21:30):
e Irvin and Chief Radioman Robert W. Copeland out of
the turbulent water. Copeland died after being transferred to the Phoebus,
despite efforts to revive him. As the rescue effort continued,
Lieutenant Commander Wiley regained consciousness and communicated to the crew
of the German vessel, but it had been the Acron
and not a plane that they saw to send into
(21:51):
the sea. For more than five hours, Phoebus continued to
search for survivors, but their efforts were for not two
more men. Actually, he died in the search effort when
another blimp, the non rigid J three, which also served
out of the base at Lakehurst, went on a mission
to search for survivors. Five men survived the unsuccessful forced
(22:12):
landing of the J three, but there were two killed.
Five and a half hours after the Acron went down,
the Coastguard destroyer Tucker arrived on the scene. The Phoebus
transferred the body of Chief radium In Copeland and the
surviving crew of the Acron over to the Tucker and
the search for any additional survivors. The destroyer Tucker was
joined by the Portland, a heavy cruiser destroyers Cole McDougall
(22:35):
and Hunt, the cutter Mojave, and two Coastguard planes, but
no additional members of the crew of the Acron were found.
This loss was particularly noteworthy because of the leadership staff
that was on board when this accident happened. So, in
addition to the regular staff, UH and Commander McCord, Rear
(22:55):
Admiral Moffatt, his aid, Commander Henry B. Cecil, the commander
of the name Will Air Station at Lakehurst, and several
additional guests were also on the Acron when it went down.
In total, seventies three men lost their lives when the
Acron was destroyed. So for comparison, we mentioned the Hendenburg
at the beginning of the show UH and the death
hole in the Hindenburg disaster was thirty six, one of
(23:17):
whom was a man who had been on the ground.
Sixty two of the people aboard the Hennenburg survived, which
is a far greater proportion than the three who survived
the Akron. Not long after the disaster, Wiley, Richard Deal,
and Moody Irvin appeared together before the public, and Wiley
described to the events of April fourth this way, we
were rescued by the German tanker Phoebus and are the
(23:40):
sole survivors. Just before the accident to the Akron, I
was in the control tower on the left side of
the control tower. Our first indication of being near the
center of the storm was when the ship shuttered violently,
and per Wiley's account, the crew did not realize how
closely they had gotten to the ocean until they had
sudden visibility that they were only about three feet from
(24:02):
the water. And he continued quote, the order was given
to stand by for a crash. The ship hit the
water within thirty seconds of that order, and most of us,
I believe, were catapulted into the water. We were in
the water about forty five minutes, and we are now
ready for duty in airships or wherever we may be assigned. Incidentally,
(24:22):
Herbert Wiley had been passed over for command of the
Acron when both Dressel and McCord were appointed. Wiley had
notified McCord if the weather conditions that could include potentially
hazardous storms before the Acron had left for the mission,
but McCord had determined that they should proceed as planned.
A storm that developed in their path was one of
the most powerful in a decade. Yeah, even though there
(24:44):
had been indications that there was going to be inclement weather, Uh,
there was no sense of how bad and how violent
this storm was going to be. Wiley was commanding officer
aboard the Akron sister ship, the USS Making, when it
went down in storm off the California coast just a
year later. Wiley also survived that incident. While portions of
(25:06):
the Akron were salvaged from the sea weeks after it sank,
in two thousand two, additional debris was explored by the Navy.
Portions of the ship's rigid ribs were observed still sticking
out of the sediment on the ocean floor. The Akron's
pennant is now part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential
Library and Museum's collection. In fourteen, a grant from the
(25:28):
National Film Preservation Foundation to the University of Akron's archival
services enabled the library division to preserve several films of
the Akron, and several of them were referenced in this episode.
We will link to them in the show notes. Yeah,
it's just four, but they're um they're really interesting, particularly
that one that shows them training to hook onto the
(25:49):
trapeze is really spectacular. It seems very slow and relaxed,
but when you realize what's happening, it seems almost discordant
in how calm it seems, because I would be completely
in a state of nerve wrack. Uh. So that is
the acron. We may eventually also do an episode on
the sister ship the USS make in, but for the moment,
that's the akron. Do you also have some listener mail
(26:10):
for us? I do, Um. We have gotten so many
postcards lately, and I just wanted to acknowledge a few
of them. Um. The first is from our listener page.
She says, Hey, I thought you might enjoy the sweet postcard.
I also wanted to thank you for the great show
and express how much I enjoy listening. As a student
at b Y you studying American studies. I love learning
new things about history. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Paige.
(26:33):
It's a lovely postcard, and I presume it's probably aimed
a little bit more at me because it is a
Star Wars postcard. Um, and I love it. It's darling.
Thank you so much. We also had a postcard from
our listener Joe Anne uh, and it is uh an
Edward Gory postcard that said her laugh made beatles swoon,
her frown made geese and cows turn upside down, illustration
(26:56):
of a goose and a cow flipped over uh, and
suggested maybe we should do an episode in the life
of Edward Gory, which we've certainly talked about. I have,
but that unless something goes wrong, it is in the works.
It is in the works, but a couple of things
need to happen first. Yeah. Uh, so that is lovely
(27:18):
and I love Gory, so I'm always in and I
can't wait for that one. And then our last one
is this hilarious postcard from I think it is Helena.
This is one of those cases where the postage markings
have kind of obscured things. But it is a postcard
from Froggy Land. She says she is holidaying in Croatia,
(27:40):
and amongst visiting many other interesting sites, we came across
this strange tourist attraction, which is Froggy Land, a room
with lots of boxes of stuffed frogs. Uh, I'm reading
this correctly. It says five hundred and seven of them
arranged in lifelike human poses. So now I have another
place that I want to go. It reminds me a
little bit of the the episode that we did about
(28:03):
the taxidermist named Potter, who did particularly a lot of
little cute mammals in adorable human poses. Froggy Land looks
very much the same, but all with frogs. So thank
you so much. This is just delightful. Uh. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at house to works dot com. You
can also find us across the spectrum of social media
as missed in History. You can visit missed in history
(28:25):
dot com to see all of our episodes of the
show ever, including many, many many before Tracy and I
were even involved. Uh, and on the episodes that Tracy
and I have worked on, they're also show notes, so
you can get all of that stuff if you just
come and visit us at missed in History dot com.
(28:46):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
houst works dot com.
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.